Sensors to map air pollution represent an ambitious project involving Google. A number of tech sites are talking about its activities in strapping Aclima sensors to Street View cars. Aclima is in the business of delivering ...

Peering closely at the "heart of Pluto," in the western half of what mission scientists have informally named Tombaugh Regio (Tombaugh Region), New Horizons' Ralph instrument revealed evidence of carbon monoxide ice.

Does ethylenedione exist or not? This controversy about the tiny OCCO molecule, which is formally a dimer of carbon monoxide, has been quietly continuing for about a century. American researchers have now presented conclusive ...

Three companies announced they have entered into a letter of intent to build Europe's first commercial-scale production facility to create bioethanol from waste gases produced during the steelmaking process. The announcement ...

First discovered in 1930, Pluto was considered to be the ninth planet in our Solar System for many decades. And though its status has since been downgraded to that of a dwarf planet, thanks to the discovery of Eris in 2004, ...

The space between stars is not empty—it contains a vast reservoir of diffuse material with about 5-10% of the total mass of our Milky Way galaxy. Most of the material is gas, but about 1% of this mass (quite a lot in astronomical ...

A new NASA supercomputer simulation of the planet and debris disk around the nearby star Beta Pictoris reveals that the planet's motion drives spiral waves throughout the disk, a phenomenon that causes collisions among the ...

Using the high-resolution science camera on board ESA's Rosetta spacecraft, scientists have identified more than a hundred patches of water ice a few metres in size on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Astronomers study the elements scattered between the stars to learn about the internal workings of galaxies, their motion and chemistry. To date, however, attempts to detect the telltale radio signature of carbon in the very ...

NOEMA (Northern Extended Millimeter Array), the most powerful millimetre radio telescope of the Northern Hemisphere, has unveiled its first astronomical image: a unique and spectacular view of a previously unknown region ...

Carbon monoxide

Carbon monoxide, with the chemical formula CO, is a colorless, odorless and tasteless, yet highly toxic gas. Its molecules consist of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom, connected by a covalent double bond and a dative covalent bond. It is the simplest oxocarbon, and can be viewed as the anhydride of formic acid (CH2O2).

Carbon monoxide is produced from the partial oxidation of carbon-containing compounds; it forms in preference to the more usual carbon dioxide (CO2) when there is a reduced availability of oxygen, such as when operating a stove or an internal combustion engine in an enclosed space. Carbon monoxide has significant fuel value, burning in air with a characteristic blue flame, producing carbon dioxide. Despite its serious toxicity, it was once widely used (as the main component of coal gas) for domestic lighting, cooking and heating, and in the production of nickel. Carbon monoxide still plays a major role in modern technology, in industrial processes such as iron smelting and as a precursor to myriad products.